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Jimmy’s Notes on Episode 49: ‘The Magic Serpent’ (feat. Damon Noyes)

Published November 8, 2021

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? When you’re fighting for your job (and your life, at times) and trying to bring your supervillain bosses to justice for wrongfully shooting your podcast host into space, blogging just doesn’t seem very important. And to think I used to buy the koolaide these megalomaniacs were selling. Hell, one of them turned out to by the overlord I fought against during the War in Space! Insane, man, insane. I probably should’ve typed a few things out while holing up in my garage, but I had robots to maintain, including an often exhausted Jet Jaguar. He was in desperate need of some plot convenience to keep going. 😛

But now that things are returning to a semblance of “normal,” here is the first of three Jimmy’s Notes blogs coming your way this week to catch us all up. Today’s is over episode 49. The next two will drop Wednesday and Friday. Hopefully, I remember what all these notes mean. 😛

  • It’s shocking how similar The Magic Serpent is to Star Wars. Nate and Damon pointed out most of the similarities, so I won’t go into detail here. It makes me wish I’d seen the film when it first opened. Although, that was years before Star Wars was a thing. Still, I could’ve been that gaijin hipster who saw Serpent first.
  • Rodan is a Pteranodon, Damon, not a bird or a pterodactyl.
  • Actually, Damon, the Japanese words for “frog” and “toad” aren’t the same. They are “kaeru” (カエル) and “hikigaeru” (ヒキガエル), respectively.
  • No drone pickup from the Post Office? Good, because a copy of The Magic Serpent did arrive on its own to the Island. Of course, the Island had no film curator, so it sat in a P.O. box for weeks. Damn you, MIBOD!
  • “Strong husband for my daughter,” not “wife,” Damon.
  • The rest of my time in the Boy Scouts was spent doing…much more boring things. That being said, Masao and I were the most popular kids in our troupe for a year. We got invited to all the parties, and we may have gotten a few dates in high school sharing that story. Who says loving kaiju doesn’t get you dates—oh, Michael Hamilton. No surprise. 😛

Let’s see if Nate has any leftover notes I need to share with the kaiju lovers. Survey says…not many.

  • This is just one long cycle of revenge.
  • Flying Jiraiya looks stiff and funny.
  • This movie just does what it wants, doesn’t it?
  • The kaiju designs are pretty cool and the miniatures are surprisingly good. It’s rare to see a giant frog.
  • “You didn’t kill him!”?! He seems pretty dead to me!
  • Galbraith says Orochimaru looks like Olivier’s Richard III. Okay…

One down, two to go.

Join us this week for Episode 52, which required getting a new guest thanks to WHG3’s meddling after Nate was shot into space. We didn’t get the Tourists, but we did get kaiju YouTuber (and would-be magical girl) Kaiju Kim to discuss Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris. Then after that we have…my (former?) nemesis, Michael Hamilton, from Kaiju Weekly returning for his first Godzilla film, Godzilla Raids Again as part of “Godzilla Redux.” I promise not to feed him to Anguirus.

See you on the flip side!

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